Cru

Lots of stuff has happened this past month! Last I posted I was in the middle of a 2-week break in Dallas. That was a great and relaxing time for me, helped me to prepare mentally and spiritually for these next 7 months in Albania. I saw friends and family and enjoyed plenty of tacos. When I got back it was right back into the swing of things with a seminar the next day. It was a video seminar, we showed Patrick Lencioni’s talk from the 2016 Global Leadership Summit. It had already been subtitled in Albanian. The talk was great, but when we asked our partners afterwards for their feedback they said it would be better to have a live speaker in the future. So, as much as possible, we’ll try to do that. ...

Merry Christmas to everybody! I love Christmas time, spending time with family, listening to the Advent messages at church, and especially the Christmas hymns. My favorite is ‘O Holy Night’. It’s my favorite because it speaks of the hope that came into the world when Jesus Christ was born. Hope is an elusive thing. Lots of people lose hope when what they desire becomes impossible, or even worse, when they get exactly what they wanted. ...

We’ve been working on follow up since Momentum Europe. We’ve had some good meetings with people, and had some good conversations. Of course our goal is to help our partners to do that more and more - to have the conversations that lead to Gospel presentations, to encourage them to share with and invite more people, and to build their confidence. To that end we organized a training conference this past weekend. We invited about 20 young professionals out to Durres for 2 days of working through the “Bursting Your Bubble” curriculum. It was a great success! They enjoyed the time together and came away with a stronger desire to serve and share with their peers. ...

September and October have been pretty slow months, as we plan and gear up for our first big event, Momentum Europe. I’ve been busying myself with a lot of administrative work, but we’ve also had opportunity to begin training our committed believers. Bursting your Bubble In my opinion, our greatest success last year was finding 8 believers who have decided to commit to being part of our ministry. One of the things we asked of them is to commit to be trained in evangelism by our staff. We started that training this month with the series “Bursting Your Bubble”. ...

Well, it’s been a crazy couple months! When I last posted we were about to start Ice and Spice, CRU Albania’s summer camp for high school students. As part of my role on the LLM team, I was also helping out with an International School Project conference for teachers and principals. So I was already a little worn out when Ice and Spice started! But I got energized when my friends arrived from Texas. It was a great week, filled with a lot of good conversations with high school students. And as the Albanian team followed up with the students after my friends left, we heard several times about students who received christ! ...

What time is it? It’s summertime! It’s about time for Ice and Spice, the annual summer camp for high school students here in Tirana! My friends and I have been helping with this camp since the first time I came to Tirana, way back in 2013. A lot has changed since then! Albania Fried Chicken went out of business, but there’s now a legit KFC at the mall (Albania has only one mall). ...

It’s always great to go home. I’ve had multiple definitions of “home” over the years, but right now the place I most identify as “home” is Dallas. Having just spent 5 weeks there, I can totally confirm that is still the case. Since I’ve committed to a second year here, I felt the need to go home and ask my supporters to commit to a second year with me. This was the perfect time to do it, since my cousin was getting married on June 4. The only other opportunity I might have would be in August, and who really wants to go to Dallas in August? ...

This is my happy place Lake Lyndon B. Johnson, about 45 minutes west of Austin. A beautiful constant-level freshwater lake. My grandmother has owned a lakehouse here for more than 30 years. My family and I vacationed here almost every summer. If there were no Good News to preach, I would as much as possible spend my time here. Now I would remind you, brothers, of the gospel I preached to you, which you received, in which you stand, and by which you are being saved, if you hold fast to the word I preached to you—unless you believed in vain. ...

We’re moving into the spring now, and as I’m preparing to go back to Dallas for a 1 month fundraising trip, I thought I’d reflect on where we are after 6 months. Towards the Goal We have a growing number of contacts now, young professional believers who have been joining us for seminars and other activities. We’ve had a couple of vision casting meetings with them too. Word is beginning to get around that this is a place to continue what they were doing with student ministries. Most of our volunteers were formerly part of Jete Studentore (CRU’s campus ministry), which is a very good thing. ...

We got to see a really cool musical event this week! A big group of high school students from Colorado came to perform their evangelistic musical, “SHIFT”. CRU’s high school and college ministries invited a lot of students from all around Tirana. I even saw the Elbasan kids show up. Our young professionals all went and sat together near the front. It was pretty awesome to see how many people showed up! ...